Born for Adversity
by BeeInYourBonnet
Summary: Thunderbird 2 is trapped at the bottom of the ocean, entombing its two injured pilots - Virgil and Scott - along with it. With no hope of outside rescue, the only thing that the Tracy boys have left to rely on is each other...
1. First hour

_Authors note: My first attempt at a long TB fic...what can I say, the arrival of the movie has made me rediscover my old love for the Tracy boys. Bless you Mr Frakes!  
  
Disclaimer: The all-mighty Gerry Anderson owns all (or at least he should). I am but a humble fan- girl._

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**'A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity'**

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Virgil Tracy was a more than competent pilot, but it was his elder brother – Scott – who really loved to fly.  
  
Scott had a knack for flying that went beyond mere talent. The way that he handled his machines was part instinct, part insight – manipulating the controls with an awareness that was as natural to him as breathing. The simple truth was that Scott Tracy belonged in the air. He was never more unrestrained...more liberated, than he was when he was guiding an aircraft through the stratosphere.  
  
In many regards, it seemed that had been born to be a Thunderbird. Of all the Tracy brothers, it was he who had inherited the greatest of his father's passion for aeromechanics. At the age of nineteen he became the youngest American in aviation history to be awarded with combat-pilot status. By the age of twenty-three he was decorated by the United States Air Force for uncompromising valour, and – by the age of twenty-eight – he was piloting Thunderbird 1 as field leader for International Rescue.  
  
Virgil had to concede a more than passing admiration for his brother's achievements.  
  
Sitting in the flight-deck of Thunderbird 2, he stared out of the windscreen, peering thoughtfully at the bruise-coloured cumulus that rushed past them as they flew. The cargo-carrier cut through the skies with surprising grace, the massive green bulk twisting and turning with an air- borne elegance that belied its clumsy size. They were currently gliding high over the Atlantic Ocean, several miles east of the Scottish coastline. Their assignment...to evacuate workers stranded on a burning oil platform...had been a complete and total success, and the two Tracy boy's were currently looking forward to a well earned respite on their tropical base.  
  
Glancing across to where Scott sat frowning at the engine display, Virgil smiled absently to himself. Never one to sit idle - particularly not when onboard a Thunderbird craft - Scott's eyes were narrowed as he occupied himself with various mental calculations, his mind wholly occupied with the machine before him. Virgil gave a quiet chuckle and shook his head. Scott might have been an aviation genius, but he was also a terrible passenger.  
  
Moving to unclip the two-point safety harness from around his waist, Virgil raised his eyebrows questioningly and gestured towards the control panel.  
  
"You want to take over?"  
  
Scott blinked, visibly shifting mental gears to reengage himself with his surroundings. There was a slight pause as he turned to look at his brother with undisguised uncertainty.  
  
"Are you sure?"  
  
Virgil understood the reason for his brother's hesitancy. Thunderbird 1 was everything to Scott. She (and Scott had always insisted that it was a 'she') was his baby, and it was an excepted fact that he absolutely loathed giving up his machine to any other pilot. That fact given, he found it difficult to understand how Virgil could relinquish control of his Thunderbird with such comparative ease.  
  
Virgil, however, simply shrugged. "Positive. To tell you the truth, I could use a break."  
  
After a further moment of indecision, Scott relaxed into a grateful smile – the first such expression that he had allowed himself since leaving Tracy Island at the beginning of their mission.  
  
"Thanks, Virgil."  
  
"No problem."  
  
The two quickly exchanged seats – Virgil manning the co-pilot station and Scott taking over on main controls. As be buckled himself into his seat, Virgil couldn't help but think longingly of the grand-piano waiting for him in his Island quarters. Between the various missions and training operations that he had been occupied with recently, he hadn't had much opportunity to exercise his musical talents. Still, he afforded himself a small smile. If their recent string of luck held out, he might just be able to find the time to practice a few bars before John patched in with a new call for International Rescue...  
  
A sudden bleeping from the display panel tore Virgil forcibly from his thoughts. He glanced around swiftly, expression automatically shifting into one of grim readiness.  
  
"What's going on?"  
  
Scott scowled down at the sensor display, his jaw notably tensed. "We're marked." His hands flew across the controls with well-practiced swiftness, switching the guiding systems to radar as he sought out the origin of the signal. "Two missiles, coming at high speed. I think it's-"  
  
Whatever he was about to say, however, was lost as a cataclysmic explosion rocked through the hull of Thunderbird 2. The blast threw both men violently forward, their equipment blowing up in a blinding flare of smoke and electricity, metal shrieking and squealing around them. The sheer force of the impact enough to knock the giant aircraft out of the sky. Knocked off trajectory, the colossal green Thunderbird became locked in a downward spiral that put them on a direct course to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.  
  
...And Scott's last conscious thought as he watched the cold waters rush up to meet them, was how much he wished that he had let Virgil keep the controls...

* * *

It was cold in this place.  
  
Cold and dark and painful.  
  
A raw agony beyond anything that he had previously experiences was throbbing through his knee, the pain blossoming into bitter tendrils that shot up his spinal column and into every nerve of his body. Poisoned smoke burned in his lungs, causing every breath that he took to feel as though he was choking down on burning hot coals, and every inch of his skin felt like it had been peeled away and then rather hastily reapplied. Gritting his teeth in an unconscious gesture of pain, Scott Tracy allowed his eyelids to drift open a fraction.  
  
For a brief moment he saw nothing but black. Then, slowly, a blurred vision began to slowly fade into focus...a familiar face emerging in the shadows above him...  
  
Virgil.  
  
Blue eyes met brown as his younger brother stared down at him; fear and relief vying for prominence across his features. His normally tanned skin had acquired a sickly tinge of grey and was splattered liberally with spots of blood, his uniform singed black and torn across his chest. A deep gash split his lower lip in two, still oozing scarlet.  
  
It wasn't a pretty picture.  
  
Most worryingly to Scott, however, were the glittering smudges of moisture that streaked down Virgil's ashen cheeks. Had he been crying? The thought was deeply unsettling, and as Scott stared up into the face of his brother, he was – perhaps for the first time – acutely aware of how young Virgil looked...how vulnerable.  
  
"...Hey..." he croaked weakly, raising a trembling hand to wipe at a smudge of blood on the other man's cheek, "...Are you alright?"  
  
Virgil was still for a moment, then gave an oddly strangled noise at the back of his throat, somewhere between a sigh and a sob. That was so typical of Scott. Regardless of his own injuries, Scott's first priority...his _only_ priority...was his brother's safety. Virgil would have laughed, but a sudden tightness in his throat made that action all but impossible.  
  
Blinking quickly, he turned his head away and passed a grimy hand over his eyes, not wanting the elder Tracy to see.  
  
"Yes, Scott. I'm alright."

* * *

In order to keep his mind distracted from his current predicament, Scott made mental lists.  
  
It had been his favourite game as a child. Even back then he had been a meticulous organiser – a facet of his personality that would later prove invaluable in his role as Thunderbird team leader. The lists that he constructed were random and meaningless – his ten favourite movies, best songs ever...that sort of thing – but they provided him with the sense of order and structure that his young mind had instinctively craved.  
  
Now, however, he was a grown man of thirty, and the lists that he constructed were somewhat different in nature...

'_The top five most painful injuries that I sustained during the crash (in ascending order):  
  
5) My dislocated shoulder  
  
4) My broken wrist  
  
3) My four ( five?) fractured ribs  
  
2) The third-degree burns on my arms and chest  
  
1) The metal spike sticking through my knee'_

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"Thunderbird 2 to Tracy Island. This is Thunderbird 2 calling Tracy Island. Come in, father."  
  
Virgil wiped the sweat from his forehead, ignoring – for the moment – the coppery taste of blood that filled his mouth. He blinked and shook himself distractedly, forcing himself into focus. The air was thick with the acrid scent of smoke and jet-fuel, and the pungent tang was causing his eyes to stream. A steady trickle of water sounded somewhere in the darkness behind him.

_Not exactly ideal working condensations,_ Virgil thought to himself dryly.

"This is Thunderbird 2 calling Tracy Island. Father, do you respond?"  
  
"Give it up, Virgil," Scott's voice drifted weakly up from the back of the flight deck. "The transmitter blew up in the explosion – there's no way that they can hear you."  
  
Virgil breathed out slowly and allowed his eyes to slide shut, Scott's words forcing him to acknowledge the reality of the situation. "Yes..." he admitted quietly, "Yes, I know."  
  
Peering blindly into the murky half-light, he could just about make out his brother's indistinct form propped up against a nearby wall. While Virgil had escaped from the crash relatively unscathed – save for a few minor cuts and bruises – Scott had taken the full force of the explosion. The force of the impact had thrown him from one end of the cabin to the other, resulting in numerous broken bones and causing his knee to become impaled on a protruding spike of twisted metal.  
  
...To say that he was in pain would have been something of an understatement.  
  
Scott's gave a dry cough and tried to shift to a more comfortable position – an endeavour which only accomplished further agony. He grimaced, but did not complain.  
  
"Did you check the Global Positioning system?"  
  
"It's completely fried. We could be in Cairo or Kentucky as far as I'd be able to tell."  
  
"What about the radar?"  
  
"Same story. All major systems are down." Virgil looked around at his ruined vessel, an almost tangible look of pain briefly contorting his features. "Radio, GPS, satellite communications...they're all gone. Whoever fired that missile knew exactly where to do the most damage."  
  
Scott was quiet for a short time. The hollow silence gathered around them, shroud-like and inexplicably heavy. When he finally spoke again, his voice was quiet and considering, little more than a measured whisper.  
  
"That means that father and the others have no way of knowing where we are," he murmured softly, as much to himself as to his brother. "They can't help us."  
  
There was a heavy silence as the two men allowed the enormity of this realisation to settle down upon them. Neither spoke, neither moved, and – for a brief moment – neither breathed. It was as though Scott's words had articulated a terrible truth that neither had been previously willing to admit to. They were alone. Even worse, they were alone with no hope of rescue.  
  
Their current situation was, Virgil realised, possibly about as bad as it could get. After plummeting from the sky in a blaze of fire and debris, Thunderbird 2 had sunk to the bottom of the ocean, finally coming to rest approximately four miles below the surface of the waves. Thankfully, the flight-deck had remained largely intact...that single piece of luck being the only reason that the two brothers were still alive. Beyond that, however, they were trapped. No engines, no lights, and only enough air to sustain them for a matter of hours...  
  
...They were entombed in the very Thunderbird that their father had devoted his life to creating.  
  
Shivering from something other than the cold, Virgil returned his attention to the radio, hoping against hope that the force of his desperation would somehow cause the transmitter to spontaneously repair itself.  
  
"Thunderbird 2 to Tracy Island. Thunderbird 2 to Tracy Island, this is Virgil. Please respond...father..._please_..."

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_Tbc_... 


	2. Second hour

_Disclaimer: I own nothing, yadda, yadda...you get the drill.  
  
Author's note: Well, I've finally seen the Thunderbird's movie, and I must say that it is a lot better than the film critics are giving it credit for. I loved it! In fact, my only qualm is that I would have preferred less shots of the kids running around on the Island, and more shots of the Tracy boys in their sexy little space suits! (Incidentally, on a related note, the guy who plays John? H-O-T!)  
  
Also, special thanks go to Skywench, for pointing out that Thunderbird 2 could not have been four miles below the surface of the ocean. I admit, it was a stab in the dark...I have no idea about nautical depths. I'm doing more research and I'll edit it asap._

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**_'A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity'_**

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_"_So...how does it look?"

Virgil stared down at his brother's exposed torso with a mixture of trepidation and barely-repressed revulsion. He'd tended to burn victims before, and always thought that he had a cast-iron stomach for such things...but, somehow, seeing similar damage on someone he loved was all the more horrifying. Scott's once-tanned muscles had been stained in shades of black and scarlet, clear pus oozing from the peeling blisters in his skin.  
  
Virgil swallowed and looked away, forcing his trembling hands to still. "Not too bad. A few bandages and some of grandma's chicken soup and you'll be back to normal in no time."  
  
The lie was hollow and unconvincing – even to his own ears – and he was not surprised when he heard Scott give a derisive snort.  
  
"You know, you never could lie to me, Virg."  
  
The two men's eyes met and held. There was a desperate hopelessness that Virgil had never seen in Scott's expression before...and he never wanted too see it again. He couldn't stand to see his brother so helpless – it upset everything that he thought he knew about the world. Scott was strong...invincible, even. Men like Scott Tracy didn't get hurt...didn't feel fear...  
  
...Men like Scott Tracy didn't die.  
  
Feeling sick to his very soul, Virgil cleared his throat and busied himself with using Scott's torn shirt to mop up the blood from his impaled knee.  
  
"There's not much that I can do about those burns," he started quickly, hoping to quell the tide of nausea that he felt rising in his gut, "And without a first aid-kit I can't splint your wrist either. I'm going to have to do something about your shoulder, though."  
  
Scott gave a tired sigh and grimaced, already guessing what was to come.  
  
"Must you?"  
  
"'Fraid so."  
  
The elder Tracy shifted his position slightly, carefully adjusting his body weight to lean forward. Even this simple endeavour left him clammy with perspiration. His head swam suddenly, and – for a brief moment – he was terrified that he was about to faint. Then he felt his brother's hands ghosting lightly over his shoulder, the surprisingly gentle touch enough to anchor him back into consciousness.  
  
A shallow heartbeat. A pause.  
  
"Scott...this is going to hurt."  
  
Scott tried to smile reassuringly, but found that the best that he could manage was a pained snarl.  
  
"I guessed as much."  
  
God, he hated this part...  
  
With one sickening tug, Virgil forced Scott's dislocated arm upwards.  
  
There was an audible crunch of bone-against-bone as the limb was forced back into its socket, Scott's entire body lurching in an instinctive effort to evade further pain. The sudden movement caused his leg to jerk, lodging the spear of metal even deeper into the soft tissue of his knee and causing fire-works of agnoy to explode within his crippled leg.  
  
...Lost beneath the surging waves, Thunderbird 2 trembled with the sound of Scott's screams.

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_Virgil had never been popular at school. He was too quiet, too introverted, to be of any real interest to his peers, and they largely left him alone in favour of more interesting company. Virgil did not mind particularly...in fact, he welcomed the solitude...but that all changed after the death of his mother.  
  
Although naturally reserved, grief made the young boy ever more reclusive, leaving him an easy target for the taunts of the other children. The taunts turned to threats, and the treats – eventually – progressed to actions. Recess became a daily torture as crowds of tormenting bullies began to wait for him outside the gates...waiting to tease and punch and kick.  
  
But Virgil never fought back.  
  
It simply wasn't in his nature.  
  
The ring-leader of his abusers was a thick-set boy named David Harris. One day, while walking the gauntlet that took him from the classroom to the school-bus, David landed Virgil a punch that left his eye so swollen that he could barely blink.  
  
...Jeff Tracy – typically – was not there when Virgil crept quietly up the stairs to his bedroom that evening. Scott, however, was. Soothed with balms of antiseptic-cream and lemonade, Virgil told him the whole story.  
  
For Scott – with his characteristically black and white sense of justice – the solution seemed simple. If David had hurt Virgil, then Scott would hurt David.  
  
And he did.  
  
The fight was brief and bloody, and David hadn't stood a chance. Though he had the advantage over Scott in both height and weight, Scott was consumed with a savage anger that gave his wiry adolescent body unprecedented strength. After a teacher had pulled the boys apart, David was rushed to hospital.  
  
It took eighteen stitches and a day in the emergency ward to repair the damage to his face.  
  
As punishment for his actions, Scott was suspended from school for almost two weeks. Indeed, if it hadn't been for the wealth and influence of Jeff Tracy, it was doubtful that the headmaster would have permitted Scott back at all. The reprimands did not stop at school, either. Jeff made no secret of his deep displeasure at his eldest son's behaviour, and took it upon himself to make Scott sorry that he had ever laid a finger on David Harris. He placed Scott under house-arrest for a month and made him do double chores for a further two.  
  
...But to Virgil, Scott's actions had elevated him to almost heroic status. He was his constant companion all the way through his punishments – even going as far as to sneak him cookies when he was forbidden dessert. As far as he was concerned, his brother could do no wrong. He was his idol...his protector...his best friend.  
  
As long as he had Scott, nothing could hurt him..._

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_"_What time is it?"  
  
From his position on the cold metal floor, Virgil squinted to see the digital display on his wrist-watch. "Almost fifteen-hundred hours," he informed Scott quietly. "Father must have realised that we're missing by now...what do you think he's doing?"  
  
Scott's eyes were dim and unfocused, a frown of thought creasing his blood- smeared brow. "Following the set procedure, I guess. He'll have John maintaining a full satellite sweep on all channels, and Thunderbird 1 will be dispatched on a visual search around our last known coordinates." He paused for a moment, then gave a small sigh. "Aside from that, though, there's not much that he can do."  
  
The two brothers were silent for several minutes. Within the confines of the dimly lit flight-cabin, they could hear Thunderbird 2's metal hull groaning around them. Scott suppressed a shudder, trying desperately not to think about the water pressure that was currently pressing down above their heads. Thunderbird 2 was a cargo carrier...it hadn't been designed to withstand this kind of stress. It was only a matter of time before the water found its way in, drowning the two pilots trapped inside the flight deck...if they hadn't suffocated first, of course.  
  
The sound of Virgil's soft voice pulled Scott from his ravine.  
  
"This is going to kill him, isn't it?"  
  
The elder Tracy's frown deepened. "Who?"  
  
Virgil shrugged, running a hand distractedly through his hair. "Father. If he loses us, it'll be just like it was when mom died." There was a slight pause. "...He's not strong enough to survive that kind of pain. Not again."  
  
The mere mention of his parents was enough to cause Scott to tense unconsciously. Virgil saw his brother's movement, and took it as an opportunity to ask the question that he had never before felt brave enough to broach.  
  
"Scott...why don't you ever talk about mom?"  
  
Scott's expression clouded as he looked away. His leg gave an involuntary twitch, curtsey of the metal spike currently spearing his knee.  
  
"Just drop it."  
  
"Scott-"  
  
"I _said_ just drop it!"  
  
Virgil was startled at the firmness – the ferocity, even – of Scott's rebuke. Something in the elder Tracy's manner had slipped aside, revealing a tension that Virgil had not even realised existed...and then, just as suddenly, it was gone. Now Scott turned to look at his brother, a look of genuine regret creasing his features.  
  
"I...I'm sorry, Virg. I don't know what got into me."  
  
Virgil's stared back with still, solemn eyes...eyes that reminded Scott so disconcertingly of his mother.  
  
"It's okay, Scott...I'm scared too."  
  
Neither said anything for a long time after that.  
  
...There was nothing left to say.

* * *

It was now nearing two hours since Thunderbird 2 had blazed from the sky. Within their bleak tomb, Scott estimated that they had approximately five hours of breathable air remaining...six at a push.  
  
It wasn't a comforting thought.  
  
Eager for distraction, and tired of dwelling on the harsh reality of their situation, Scott looked around at the ruined flight-deck. Even though the colossal green Thunderbird was not actually his, Scott could not help but feel a pang of deep pain at the devastation that surrounded him. The Thunderbird machines were not just tools for transportation...they were a part of the Tracy family. They were what had held Jeff to reality after the avalanche had claimed his wife, and they were what bound the Tracy brothers together as adults. As far as Scott could see, without the Thunderbirds, without International Rescue, they were nothing.  
  
Seeing Thunderbird 2 in such as sorry state was like watching an old friend die slowly before his eyes. He wasn't ashamed to admit that it cut him to the core.  
  
His gaze raked the murky semi-dark, seeking out familiar shapes amid the destruction. The display panels were reduced to heaps of twisted metal, exposed wires spilling from the now-useless radio system like bleeding arteries. Then his gaze fell upon the upturned flight chair...and in turn the large plastic container that lay lodged beneath it.  
  
A glimmer of disbelief passed over his features, quickly replaced by a look of recognition. For a long moment, it seemed to Scott as though his heart had made a dare-devil leap into his throat.  
  
"Oh my God..." he breathed softly, dark eyes wide.  
  
Sitting nearby, Virgil stirred back into awareness at the sound of his brother's gasp. "What?"  
  
"Virgil..." Scott trailed into silence, almost afraid to trust what he was seeing, "...Virgil, its Gordon's aqua-gear."  
  
Virgil followed Scott's line of sight, then scowled as he too noticed the container. It was obscured – half buried by fallen debris – but both instantly recognised it for what it was. Virgil was instantly on his feet, scrambling feverishly to free the box from where it lay trapped. Within mere moments, he had taken the container in his hands, unclipping the security locks to reveal a lovingly stored scuba-mask and oxygen tank – obviously Gordon's.  
  
Virgil stared down at the equipment in his hands. He sank slowly to his knees, exhaling softly in a quiet gasp of amazement. "But he always stows it away it Thunderbird 4...what's it doing here?"  
  
"He must have left it here by accident after your last mission - you know what he's like."  
  
There was a heavy silence between them...then, suddenly, Virgil smiled. Strange how only a matter of minutes ago, the younger Tracy boy had suspected that he would never smile again. Now he was grinning like a complete idiot, dark eyes glittering with unshed tears of happiness. With Gordon's scuba-gear, they had a chance of making it towards the surface...everything was going to be alright again.  
  
...He and Scott would be back on Tracy Island within hours, and all this would be nothing but a distant memory to laugh at with his brothers...  
  
"I can't believe it...we can get out of here! Thank God, Scott!" Still overcome with the intensity of his relief, he suddenly noticed - for the first time - his brother's silence. Almost regretfully, he tore his gaze away from the container. "Scott...?"  
  
To his surprise, Scott was also smiling...but it was a small, sad expression - one that spoke more of grim resolve than of joy. He made a helpless gesture with his one good hand, his pale forehead shining with beads of perspiration.  
  
"Look at me, Virg. I'm not going anywhere."  
  
Virgil frowned and shook his head...not understanding – or perhaps not wanting to understand – what Scott was trying to tell him.  
  
"Wait...what are you saying?"  
  
Despite his expression of forced neutrality, an almost tangible look of sorrow danced briefly across the elder Tracy's features. This was, without question, the hardest thing that he had ever had to do...  
  
"I can't come with you, Virgil," he told his brother firmly, praying to God that he spoke with more conviction than he felt. "You're going to have to leave me behind."

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_Tbc..._


	3. Conflict

_Disclaimer: I own neither the Tracy boys, nor the universe in which they inhabit. All hail the almighty Gerry Anderson!_

_Authors note: A big hearty 'cheers!' to everyone who's reviewed._

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_**'A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity'**_

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"Virgil?"

Silence.

Scott scowled, trying vainly to suppress the rising swell of frustration growing in his chest. His brother's stubborn quiet was more than just irritating - it was infuriating. Ten minutes without speaking. Ten whole minutes. Given the considerably shortened life-span that Scott was now looking at, those ten minutes might as well have been an eternity.

His wounded leg gave an involuntary jerk. The faint worry was beginning to creep into his mind that the spike might have snagged a nerve, crippling him from the knee down...a worry made worse by the fact that he could no longer feel any sensation in his lower leg. There was a hot, throbbing pain in his knee, but nothing beyond that.

Cold, dead nothing.

"You're going to have to talk to me sometime, you know. This isn't going to go away."

In the dim semi-dark, Scott could just about make out his brother's huddled form. Virgil was sitting on the floor at the opposite end of the flight deck, hugging his knees to his chest. His head was turned away in an all-too obvious attempt to avoid Scott's gaze. It was an obstinate and childish gesture, and it caused Scott's spark of frustration to suddenly blaze into a flame of indignant anger.

"_Goddamnit_ Virgil!" he yelled suddenly, "Don't just sit there! _Say_ _something_!!"

His words reverberated off the smooth metal walls. The echo hung in the air – harsh and accusing – before gradually fading into quiet, like a poison diffusing in water.

Finally, Virgil looked up.

"I'm hungry," he murmured, his voice as dull and emotionless as a child reciting a math table.

Scott glared furiously towards the younger Tracy, dark eyes blazing. Something ugly stirred within him then...something hateful and irrational. He saw his brother's weakness – his inability to cope with the situation – and felt nothing but disgust towards him.

...For one, brief moment – the first time that he had left such an emotion in his entire adult life – Scott Tracy hated his brother.

Truly hated him.

* * *

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_Scott had always considered it a privilege to hear his brother perform on the piano. _

_Music allowed Virgil to express all the things that he could never find the words for. When his heart ached, he played soft and low; when he was happy, his songs were like pure sunshine. He weaved a small piece of himself into every simple melody, laying his normally-guarded soul bare on the ivory keys. If he had been born anything other than a Tracy, Scott was in no doubt that his brother would have graced the finest concert halls in the world. _

_However, despite Virgil's obvious gifts, he very rarely performed in public. He preferred to play alone, or to a select few family and friends. In fact, during the whole of the twenty-eight-year span of his life, Virgil had only ever taken his music to the stage once..._

_...only once... _

_Virgil had surprised everyone when he announced his part in the upcoming school-recital. He had been fourteen years old at the time: a quiet, unassuming adolescent, with eyes that seemed too old for his boyish features. He performed a solo rendition of Mahler's fifth symphony, and there was no question in anybody's mind that Virgil was the outstanding star of the night's show. The applause rang out long after the curtain had fallen on the stage, and nobody clapped harder than the four Tracy boys sitting in the front row. The evening had been perfect in everyway, except for one detail: _

_The empty seat next to Alan where Jeff Tracy should have been sitting. _

_Hours later, when the recital was finished and the Tracy family had returned to their modest sub-urb home, Scott had found Virgil sitting alone in the lamp-lit cool of the kitchen. He hadn't bothered changing after the concert and was still dressed in his rented tuxedo; his shoulders slumped low as he methodically excavated a tub of chocolate ice-cream. He did not look up as Scott sat down in the chair opposite. _

_The two brothers sat in silence for several minutes. The refrigerator hummed quietly in the background, a comforting barrier of white-noise._

"_Virgil?" _

"_Hm?" _

"_Are you okay?" _

_Another mouthful of ice-cream. A pause to lick the spoon. _

"_I'm fine." _

_Scott sighed and leaned back in his chair, turning his head away to stare out of the darkened window. _

"_I'm sure that father didn't mean to forget," he murmured quietly, the lie tripping off his tongue with well-practiced ease. "He's just been so busy lately, that's all. Maybe next time, huh?"_

_Virgil's expression did not change, and Scott noticed for the first time how desperately tired he looked. Deep down, they both knew that there would be no 'next time'. His recital - and, by extension, his love of music - had been scorned by the one person that he had most desperately wanted to please. Jeff's absence might not have been consciously meant as a rejection, but that was how Virgil interoperated it nonetheless. _

_Scott stared sadly at his younger sibling for a long moment. _

"_Virgil?"_

"_Hm?" _

_The eldest Tracy son opened his mouth to speak, but – somehow – no words were forthcoming._

_...So many things that he wanted to say... _

_Seeing Virgil on-stage – alone and fearless under the glare of spot-light, his elegant fingers coaxing a haunting melody from the piano – had left Scott with such a mixture of emotions that the performance itself was nothing but a blur in his memory. He had been frightened, elated, moved, saddened...all, it seemed, within the same heartbeat. For the first time in his life, he truly comprehended just how much he admired Virgil. A fierce swell of devotion had surged through him, and he had realised - with sudden, brutal clarity - that he would rather die than see his brother hurt. _

_...But, of course, Scott would never allow himself to say such things aloud. He gathered his feelings and locked them away deep within himself...hidden alongside his love for his mother and the aching guilt that he still felt over her death. _

_It was for the best._

"_You were amazing up there, Virg," he told him, voice steady with a deeply-felt sincerity. "We were all really proud of you."_

_...**I** was proud of you._

_The last part of Scott sentence remained unsaid, but they both knew what he meant nonetheless. _

_Virgil smiled, and – for a split second – his too-old eyes seemed to become young again._

"_Thanks, Scott. It means a lot."_

_...And it **had** meant a lot. To Virgil, it meant everything._

* * *

Fifteen minutes of silence now, and if Scott hadn't been in such crippling pain, he probably would have gotten up and smacked Virgil around the head a few times.

The air in the cramped flight deck was beginning to feel hot and stale...a factor which did nothing to help quell Scott's increasingly black mood. Under normal circumstances, he was a remarkably calm and collected young man. These, however, were not normal circumstances, and his famous Tracy temper – as inherited from his father and grandfather – was currently bubbling away under the surface, ready to unleash itself at any given moment.

He gritted his teeth suddenly and looked towards his unspeaking brother.

"Alright, fine...just fine. Sit there and bury your head in the sand if that's what you want. But if you won't talk, you can at least listen."

Virgil stirred, but said nothing. His breathing was becoming deep and haggard, and Scott, in spite of his anger towards him, felt a pang of worry tighten across his throat. The younger Tracy didn't sound too healthy...which only made him all the more determined to see Virgil escape before it was too late.

"I'm guessing that all of Thunderbird 2 is flooded," he began, voice clipped and sharp with militaristic bluntness, "You can use the aqua-gear to get down to the docking bay – as long as the missiles didn't do too much damage, it should be pretty easy to find the spare equipment kept there for Thunderbird 4 missions. Gordon's deep-sea diving suit is stored in one of the lockers there. It'll protect you from the water-pressure once you get out into the ocean, and there's a new air-regulator to make sure that you don't get the bends while resurfacing, but you'll have to move quickly – it's not much above zero degrees out there and the dry-suit won't protect against the cold for very long. You'll have two hours...maybe three, before you go into shock."

A rising tide of nausea rose in his stomach at that point, and he had to pause for a moment to wait for it to subside. He tried to tell himself that it was just the blood loss making him faint, but the truth was that the thought of his brother - lost and alone in the middle of the ocean - terrified him beyond reason.

...Still, it was certainly better than the alternative: to allow Virgil to stay here and watch him slowly die.

..._Anything_ was better than that.

"Hopefully you'll get picked up before then, though," he said, picking swiftly up on his last train of thought, "It's a busy shipping lane – someone's bound to spot you. Even if they don't, you can still make for the coast. The swim will keep your body temperature up, and it shouldn't take you too long to - "

"Scott."

Virgil's ever-calm voice cut through him like a subtle knife.

"What?"

"I'm not going."

A drop of sweat ran down from Scott's temple and into the corner of his right eye. The salt-water stung at his corneas, and he instinctively raised a hand to knuckle it away. "We've been over this - "

"No, _you've _been over this." Virgil raised his head to look to his brother, his eyes flashing in...what? For a split second Scott had almost thought that Virgil looked angry...but that was impossible. Virgil was never angry. "I'm not leaving you here by yourself, alright? I'm staying."

"Like hell you are," Scott snapped. "I'm still the field leader here."

Scott's irritation towards Virgil was, he felt, more than justified. Not only was Virgil disobeying a direct order from his field-leader, he was also neglecting his duties to International Rescue, and – worst of all in Scott's opinion – was placing his own personal feelings above the greater good of the Tracy family.

To his surprise, however, Virgil merely laughed. It was a shrill, hysterical laugh...unnaturally loud against the oppressive quiet. "Yeah? Well from where I'm standing, you're not in much condition to be giving out orders."

"And in no condition to swim, either. We have to be realistic here, Virg. I'm as good as dead, I know that. You, on the other hand, have a chance of getting out of here. You have to at least try."

Virgil shook his head in quiet defiance. "I can't. I...I won't. Not without you."

Scott sighed and hung his head. The heavy blood-loss that he had suffered was making his head swim, and he suddenly felt tired...more tired than he could ever remember feeling before. He felt like some ancient thing; no longer flesh and bone, but dust...centuries-worth of dust held together by a web of pain. He wasn't angry anymore – just old and frightened.

"You're going to do this, Virg," he said, knowing the truth in his words even as he spoke them.

"Why?"

The elder Tracy closed his eyes. "Because I'm asking you to, and you've never said no to me before."

He felt his leg give another involuntary jerk, the hollow pain in the base of his knee crawling up his thighs to burn across his hips. He bit down on a hiss of discomfort, forehead contorting in a blood-smeared scowl. This wasn't how he had hoped to die. In his grim dreams of death, Scott had always hoped to leave the Earth in the midst of some valiant rescue attempt...something noble enough to make his passing not so much an ending as an honour. He had never thought that his days would end like this: crippled and pathetic, and waiting for death like a rat on a trap.

...He didn't want his brother to see him like this. He didn't want to be remembered this way.

"_Please_, Virgil" he whispered softly, pleading to the darkness beyond his closed eyelids, "...Don't make me beg..."

He was ashamed to hear himself speak those words...ashamed to hear the raw need in his voice...but he knew that it was the only way.

...Virgil had never been able to deny him anything...

"Alright Scott," Virgil whispered at last, voice crushed and trembling in defeat, "Whatever you want."

* * *

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_Tbc..._


	4. The escape

_Authors note: Okay, I admit, I'm taking liberties with both the characters in this chapter. Both boys might see a little OOC, but - the way I see it - if I kept them strictly IC, then they'd both behave like good little boy scouts all the time, and then where would the angst be? :-)_

_Thanks to everyone who informed me that Lex Shrapnel played John in the movie. This knowledge will certainly make it a lot easier for me to stalk him!_

_Disclaimer: I don't own Thunderbirds or any of the associated characters. Kinda wish that I did though..._

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_**'A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity'**_

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"It's for the best, Virg. You know that, right?"

The two Tracy boys were sitting side-by-side on the cold metal floor, so close that Scott could practically taste his brother's sweat. The flight deck was growing uncomfortably warm as the minutes trickled by, and a damp, musky smell seemed to saturate the very air that they breathed.

Scott held his brother's scuba-mask in his hands. He worked saliva around his arid mouth and then spat into the mask, smearing the watery mess around the plastic. It was a trick that Gordon had taught him to keep the lens from misting once it got underwater – he hadn't paid much attention at the time, but he was certainly glad that he remembered it now.

There was a short pause, then he continued: "I mean, I know that this is a bad situation, but at least if you make it out...well, then it won't be a complete loss, will it?"

Virgil stared blankly down at the oxygen tank in his lap, but said nothing. A single blotch of scarlet burned on either cheek – the only hint of colour in his otherwise bone grey face. In truth, he looked like he was going to be sick.

Scott looked across to him, but was unable to catch his eye. "You're doing the right thing," he told him steadily. "Really."

"Then why do I feel like such a coward?"

Scott's bare chest heaved weakly as he struggled to breathe, his fractures ribs burning with every breath he took. "I know that this can't be easy for you, but it's the only reasonable choice. There's nothing that you can do for me down here. The family needs you."

Virgil now occupied himself with checking the pressure-gauge on the oxygen tank, deliberately avoiding Scott's gaze. "Father will never forgive me, you know...if I live and you die. You were always his favourite."

"That's not true," Scott protested, "You know that's not true."

"Yes it is," the younger Tracy said, voice low and unnaturally tight, "You should see the expression on his face whenever he looks at you, Scott. He's always so...so _proud_." He felt his vision begin to blur, and he quickly ducked his head so that Scott wouldn't see. "You were always the smart one, the handsome one...everything that a Tracy boy should be. How can I face him knowing that I left you behind?"

Scott stared at his younger brother for a long moment. His leg made a jerking, convulsive movement, but he no longer paid it any attention. The pain had levelled into a plateau of constant agony, and – for some reason – he found that easier to endure...certainly easier to endure than what Virgil was putting him through, at any rate. He would quite gladly have every bone in his body broken if it meant that he would never again have to see his brother so emotionally torn.

He had always known that Virgil idolised him. But the truth was that, deep down, Scott had also known that he did not deserve his brother's devotion.

Scott sighed and looked away. His head fell back to rest against the smooth metal wall behind him, dark eyes hooded as he stared into the middle distance.

"...Did I ever tell you about Nancy Lucas?" he asked suddenly.

Virgil's forehead creased into a frown, evidently bewildered. "Who?"

"Nancy Lucas. She used to waitress in a bar next to the airbase in Texas." Scott smiled faintly and gave a quietly appreciative chuckle. "Her face wasn't anything special, but her legs...God, those legs just seemed to go on forever. We dated for a while...nothing serious. I used to take her to the drive-in on Fridays, go for a couple of drinks afterwards and then wind up back at my quarters. Not exactly the romance of the century, but we had a good time. She was a convenient distraction."

Virgil had no idea where Scott was going with this, but he decided to let the elder Tracy play it out.

"So what happened?"

"She got pregnant."

Virgil started and turned suddenly. "_What_?"

"Yeah. Called me up one day out of the blue and told me that she was late – just like that. Expected me to marry her for goodness sake!" He laughed again, but there was no pleasure in the sound. "I couldn't do that. I mean, I was twenty years old, still a kid myself...I had my future to think of. So I paid for her to go to a private clinic and have an abortion. Even drove her there myself." He frowned suddenly, and – for a moment at least – seemed to forget that Virgil was even there. "She cried all the way home afterwards. I couldn't get the damn bitch to stop crying."

Virgil stared at his brother incredulously, hardly daring to breathe.

"Scott...you didn't...I mean, you didn't go through with it, did you?"

Scott blinked, forcibly reengaging himself with his surroundings. He turned to look at Virgil with cool, level eyes. "It was the best one-thousand dollars that I ever spent," he replied evenly.

Virgil couldn't speak. His head reeled, as though struck by a physical blow. He had always thought that he knew his brother better than anyone else in the world. There were never any secrets between them, never any lies...and now Scott had just admitted aborting his baby almost ten years previously. He felt as though his whole universe were collapsing around him.

"And you want to know something else?" Scott continued, wiping the back of his hand across his forehead, "I never spoke to her again after that. No flowers, no phone-calls, nothing. As far as I was concerned, Nancy Lucas didn't even exist." He gave a trembling smile of self-loathing and hung his head. "So now you know. Your 'perfect' older brother paid to have his unborn child killed. What does that tell you about the kind of guy I am, hm?"

The younger Tracy felt the bile rise in the back of his throat. He didn't want to hear this.

"Why are you telling me this?" he murmured weakly, "Why now?"

There was a moment of hesitancy...a moment of fear. Then Scott slowly handed the scuba-mask back to his brother. "Because I...I didn't want you to leave here thinking that I was something that I wasn't. You were always the better man, Virgil. Always. I just wanted you to know that."

He trailed off into silence, unable – and unwilling – to finish what he had started.

Virgil stared down at the offered mask, his dark eyes raking up to the stranger who held it. For one split second, he hardly recognised Scott at all. All his life he had held the elder Tracy up as an idol – a perfect brother who could do no wrong. Now he looked at Scott..._really_ looked at Scott...and saw for the first time all the flaws that he had been previously too blinded by devotion to notice.

...He quickly looked away, not wanting to see any more.

Wordlessly, he accepted the scuba-mask and turned it over in his hands. The lens was warm and wet with saliva, but the head-strap felt oddly cold. He quickly up it on - resting the mask on his forehead in readiness for his imminent swim - then strapped the oxygen tank to his back and tied Gordon's weight-belt to his waist. Finally, he was ready.

He felt Scott watching him, but could not bring himself to look back, too afraid of what he might see.

Scott stirred quietly beside him. "Tell the fellas that I was thinking of them, okay? And tell father..." he stopped and sighed, "Tell father that I chose this. Tell him that it wasn't your fault."

A sudden tightness formed across Virgil's throat, and he felt a by-now familiar heat begin to prickle at the back of his eyes...

"You take care of yourself, okay Virg?"

Virgil swallowed and turned to look at his older brother, not knowing what to say...

...Then, suddenly, Scott reached forward and threw him one good arm around Virgil's neck, grasping him tightly in a fierce embrace.

The gesture was so unexpected – so shockingly intimate – that, for a moment, Virgil was too stunned to react. Then, hesitantly, he leant into the hug. His trembling hands came to rest across Scott's naked back, his head fitting neatly into the curve of his brother's shoulder. Scott gave a hiss of pain but did not attempt to pull away, and Virgil closed his eyes and inhaled, trying desperately to imprint this final contact into his memory. Scott smelt like new blood, old sweat, and burnt skin...all underpinned by the subtle tang of the aftershave that he wore.

But then – all too soon it seemed to Virgil – the embrace was over. Scott pushed him roughly away, turning his head back to the shadows to hide any emotion that his face might betray. He felt grotesque to himself...a stranger.

"You'd better get going, Virgil. You'll only have about four hours of daylight left once you get topside, and you'll need to make the most of them."

Virgil drew in a shuddering breath and raised his eyes heavenward. He suddenly realised with terrible, gut-wrenching certainty that this was the probably the last time that he was ever going to see his brother alive...

...There were so many things that he wanted to tell Scott at that moment. He wanted to tell him that it didn't matter about his mistakes...that he didn't blame him for what had happened in the past...that he understood and forgave him. He wanted to tell Scott all the little secrets that he himself had kept over the years. Dark secrets - ones that he had never told anyone. But most of all - more than anything else in the world - he wanted to tell Scott that he loved him...

...That he'd loved him for as long as he could remember...

...That he would _always_ love him...

...That he was sorry that things had ended this way.

"Scott..."

"I always hated good-byes," Scott interrupted suddenly, seemingly knowing what Virgil was about to say and not wanting to hear it. "You'd probably best just go."

Virgil stared wordlessly at his brother, then down at his diver's weight-belt. He gave a short nod of agreement. Neither said anything as Virgil crossed the darkened flight-deck and made his way towards the door at the far end. There he hesitated, and turned back to look at Scott. Blue eyes met brown as a look of unspoken grief passed intangibly between them, both men looking as lost and as helpless as each other.

...There could be no going back after this...no turning back the clock. Either one died or both. There was no third choice...

His heart thudding in his chest, Virgil opened the door.

The corridor beyond was – as Scott had guessed – flooded. The ice-cold waters of the Atlantic rushed onto the flight-deck in a frothing wave, the force of the impact almost knocking Virgil clean off his feet. Quickly regaining his balance, he forced his way through though the onslaught and stepped into the hallway, wrestling the door closed before the flight-deck become flooded too. The hollow metal clang of its closure resounded through the flight-deck, echoed dully for a moment, and then there was only silence.

..._Silence_...

Scott stared into the shadows where Virgil had last stood, and felt something inside him slowly wither and die. He shrank away from the lonely darkness, moaning and afraid, and trying desperately hard not to cry.

Tracy men never cried.

* * *

"T-there may be fairies, there may be elves, but God o-only helps those who help themselves."

Waist deep in salt water, Virgil wadded slowly forwards, blind and claustrophobic in the surrounding gloom. The air was thick and clammy and tasted vaguely stale. A wave of nausea rippled through his gut and he paused for a moment, reaching a hand out to steady himself against a nearby wall. His head swam with stars and his legs felt like they had been reduced to a boneless jelly.

...To keep himself from falling apart, he recited the verse that his grandmother had taught him as a child.

"There m-may be fairies, there may be elves, but God only helps those who help themselves."

A cold, slick sweat broke out across his shoulders. He felt a bitter slime rise at the back of his mouth and leaned forward, readying himself for the oncoming sickness. Nothing happened. After a few seconds of dry heaving, he straightened and ran a trembling hand through his hair. He could still smell his Scott's aftershave on his uniform, and his aqua-mask was slick with his brother's spit.

Scott.

He could hardly believe that he was doing this. He had just left Scott – the brother who he looked up to both as friend and protector – to die alone.

What kind of a person did that make him?

Scott had taken care of him so many times in the past. Had Virgil ever done the same for him? At the time he had thought that he had...but now, looking back on it, Virgil realised that he hadn't. Not really. Not when it counted. After all, Scott had just admitted aborting his unborn child almost ten years previously...a secret that he had kept to himself for an entire decade. Where had Virgil been when that was happening? Why hadn't Scott been able to talk to him about it? Was their relationship really so one-sided?

No, he decided, it wasn't. If Scott had spoken to him, Virgil would have done everything in his power to help his brother out.

...Wouldn't he?

Virgil swayed slightly as he considered the question. His hazel eyes stared unseeingly into the darkness before him, hearing nothing but the dull thud of his own heartbeat.

_...Wouldn't he? _

After all, here he was, ten years after the abortion incident...a grown man, a _Tracy_ man...and he was about to walk out and abandon his brother to a certain death.

"I'm sorry Scott," he moaned softly to the echoing dark. "Oh God, I'm so sorry."

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_The phone-call had come in the small hours of the morning. Virgil's eyes had snapped open at the insistent ringing, his breath hitching in his throat at the shock of being awake. For a few confused seconds, he did not recognise where he was...then the cobwebs began to clear from his memory, and he remembered. He was in his dormitory at university, not at home with his brothers snoring in the next room. _

_It still felt strange, even after all these months. _

_The phone continued to ring, and - after a few minutes of blind fumbling on his bedside stand - he picked up the receiver, holding it to his ear. _

"_Hello?" he mumbled groggily. _

"_Virgil?" _

"_Scott?" Virgil frowned at the sound of his brother's voice, swinging his legs over the side of the bed to sit up. "What's going on? Has one of the boys been hurt?"_

"_No, no...nothing like that. I just wanted to talk, that's all."_

_Virgil massaged his sleep-blurred eyes with a thumb and forefinger. When he looked again, his vision had cleared somewhat, and he was able to glance down at the digital display on his wrist watch. 3:25 am. He groaned inwardly – he had an exam first thing in the morning. Why did Scott have to call tonight of all nights? _

"_Scott," he murmured tiredly, "It's almost three-thirty in the morning."_

"_Is it?" Scott sounded genuinely surprised by this information. "Sorry Virgil, I...I didn't realise." _

_Virgil heard the soft slur to his brother's voice and instantly deduced that he was drunk. It was then that the first tendrils of worry began to pull at the back of his mind. Scott wasn't much of a drinker, social or otherwise, and when he did hit the bottle, it was usually for a good reason. _

"_Are you okay?" he asked, growing more awake with each second that passed. "You sound upset." _

"_Me? Oh, I'm alright. Just lonely I guess." Scott made a short sound on the other end of the line – a sigh, perhaps? A sob? "Virgil?"_

"_Hm?"_

"_Tell me that I'm not a bad person." _

"_What?" The younger Tracy frowned into the darkness, utterly thrown by his brother's request. "No, of course you're not a bad person. Why would you even say that?" _

"_Sometimes I wonder." There was a pause on the other end of the line and Virgil guessed – quite correctly, as it happened – that Scott had taken another swig from whatever bottle he was drinking. "Sometimes I look at myself if the mirror and hardly recognise myself. Do you ever get that?" He didn't bother to wait for Virgil to answer. "No, no of course you don't. Not you. One of the benefits of a clear conscious I suppose."_

_Virgil had no idea what was going on here. Although they were both dancing around the issue, it was quite clear that something was playing on Scott's mind...though Virgil was damned if he knew what it was. Ever since he had been stationed in Texas, Scott had been going through strange mood swings...jovial one day, low the next. Virgil wondered if the rest of his family had noticed. Probably not, he realised. Scott was good at hiding things. _

_All the Tracy boys were. _

"_Scott, you know if there's anything that you want to talk about..." He trailed into silence, not certain what to say. _

_There was a short silence, and Virgil could almost hear Scott staring into space. "I know." Another noise at the end of the line - this time unmistakably a sigh. "God, I miss you, Virg." _

_Now Virgil **knew** that his brother was drunk. He was never that emotional when he was sober. _

"_I know. I miss you too, Scott. Now go sleep it off, okay? We'll talk in the morning."_

_...But they hadn't talked the following morning. In fact, neither of them had ever even mentioned the strange phone-call after that. And it was only now that Virgil realised why. The simple truth was, neither of them had wanted to rock the boat. _

_Life was just so much easier when everybody minded their own business. _

* * *

Scott was still huddled at the opposite end of the flight-deck when Virgil returned.

He heard the clank of the door opening and closing...felt the cold blast of salt-spray that rushed in from the flooded corridor...sensed rather than saw his younger brother standing over him. He would not – could not – look up. He already knew what must have happened, and it broke his heart. Virgil would not be trying to escape. He had decided to stay.

...Stay for him.

...Stay and die.

"Scott?"

Scott looked up at him then - eyes blood-shot and glittering against the surrounding gloom - and did something that he had sworn he would never to do:

Scott Tracy cried.

Virgil could not remember having seen his brother cry before. Even at their mother's funeral, back when they were just kids, Scott had held himself with stubborn solemnity, staunchly refusing to shed a single tear. Now he was a grown man of thirty, and the fury of his grief was frightening to watch. He covered his face with his hands and gave a low wail of despair, his entire body racked with great, undignified sobs. His bruised shoulders heaved with each breath that he took.

...Anybody else would have been shocked at such a display, but Virgil took it all in his stride.

The younger Tracy watched him silently for a short moment, then crossed the room to sit quietly beside him. For a long time he said nothing. Eventually - after what felt like hours, but could have only been a matter of minutes - Scott's cries turned to moans, and from there to a tired whimper. Finally, Virgil stirred.

"Please don't be mad at me, Scott," he whispered.

Scott lowered his hands away from his face and turned to stare at his younger brother. His sickly white cheeks were now blotched with red, salt-water streams running down from his eyes to his blood-smeared jaw.

"How can I be mad at you?" he asked incredulously, voice thick and strangled by tears. "You're my brother. I love you. I just wish that you wern't such a stubborn ass, thats all."

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_Tbc..._


	5. A dying chat between brothers

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Disclaimer: Thunderbirds is owned by a wonderful group of people with a great deal more money and talent than I. They know who they are._

_Authors note: Thanks to everyone who has reviewed so far. Really, you've done a good deed. Just some specific points that I wanted to reply too... _

_Boucephalos - Well, I'm sorry that you feel that way, but I appreciate your honesty. All criticism is productive._

_Alayana - I took your advice and brought myself a copy of K:19. You're right...he **is **even hotter with darker hair! -falls happily into a Lex Shrapnel-induced coma-_

_Amanduriel – no dear, you're not pedantic, just observant! Hopefully I've cleared thing up in this chapter._

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'**_A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity'_**

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Time no longer held any meaning for Virgil Tracy.

Days, hours, minutes, seconds...they seemed to melt into an inexorable haze, the very concepts somehow vague and obsolete. Trapped in endless shadow beneath the waves, Thunderbird 2 had become a whole universe unto itself – effectively severed from the outside world by a barrier of silence and water. Here there was only the constant darkness and the bleak comfort of imminent death.

...Had it ever been any other way? Virgil scowled thoughtfully into the gloom, but could no longer remember. In truth, he did not wish to. Whatever had come prior to this timeless nothing, recalling it could only lead to further grief, and so he kept such thoughts at the back of his mind. Instead, he focused on the only three things that were real to him right now - the stillness, the pain, and his brother, Scott.

Oh God, Scott...

Ever since Virgil had returned from his aborted escape attempt, he had witnessed the older Tracy take a sudden turn for the worst. His breathing was becoming laboured, each intake of air accompanied by a shallow wheeze. Before, Scott had held on in the hope that Virgil might get away...but now that hope was gone, effectively crushed by Virgil's decision to return, and Scott allowed himself to give in to his injuries. He already knew that he was dying...he didn't bother trying to fight it.

Virgil held him now, pillowing his brother's head against his shoulder. Almost two and a half hours of blood loss had left Scott too tired to support his own weight. He was glad of the physical contact. It was oddly reassuring.

"Scott?"

No answer.

"Hey, Scott...you still with me?"

The dark-haired young man gave a slurred mumble, jerking into consciousness. "Huh?"

Virgil's forehead creased into an anxious frown. "Don't fall asleep, Scott. Keep your eyes open."

"S-sor...sorry." Scott grimaced and blinked blindly ahead, his cracked lips struggling to form words. "I'm just so tried..."

"I know, I know. But try, okay? For me?"

Scott sighed wearily. "For you," he assented, voice quiet with drained resolution. If Virgil needed him, then he would force himself to stay awake, no matter how tempting the welcome oblivion of slumber might seem...

...An unexpected sensation in his legs – or leg, given that one of them was effectively dead now – made him give a small start. "I can feel water at my feet," he said, not knowing whether or not to be surprised by this revelation.

From somewhere in the unseeing darkness above his head, he felt Virgil give a short nod. "The pressure seal was broken when I first opened the door to the hallway. We've been leaking water for the past ten minutes."

"Just when things couldn't get any better, huh?" Scott peered downward with detached curiosity. In the deepening gloom, he could just about make out the oily glint of water puddling by his shins. He scowled suddenly and gave a soft grunt of irritation. "Damn."

Virgil twisted his head to look down at where his brother was resting. "What?"

"That noise."

Virgil paused and listened. All he could hear was the steady trickle of the Atlantic forcing itself through the metal doors and onto the flight-deck. "What about it?"

Scott squirmed and ran a hand restlessly over the un-burnt portion of his lower abdomen. A ghost of a smile flickered at the corner of his blood-encrusted mouth.

"I've just realised how badly I need to pee."

Virgil had to laugh at that. It was a carefully quiet laugh – not wanting to shake too much in case he disturbed his brother – but a laugh nonetheless. The heavy feeling that had been growing steadily in his gut lifted for a moment, like a parting in a storm-cloud. He was with Scott, and that was enough. Whatever happened to them, they would face it together...that was all that mattered.

* * *

With nothing else to do except wait for death, Virgil found himself asking questions.

"What you said before...about Nancy Lucas? Was it true?"

Scott gave a bleary blink, his eyes now struggling to maintain focus. "It's not the sort of thing I'd lie about, Virg."

_Good point, _Virgil thought to himself. He played distractedly with the frayed cuff of his IR shirt. "Did you love her?"

Scott did not hesitate. "No."

"Have you ever been in love?"

Again, no pause. "No."

Virgil nodded sadly, as though that had been the answer that he was expecting, but he was disappointed to hear it nonetheless. "Me neither," he admitted, letting go off the cuff and dropping his hands to his lap. "Do you ever wonder if we're missing out on anything?"

"On what? Wife? Kids? White picket-fence?" Scott coughed faintly and then shook his head. Even this simple action caused a spear of pain to shoot through his skull, and he quickly stopped. "It wouldn't have been enough."

The younger Tracy hesitated. He looked down at his sleep-drugged brother, a questioning frown pulling at his heavy eyebrows. "Do...do you ever think about what would have happened?" He halted suddenly and blushed, almost embarrassed to ask such a personal question. "If you hadn't gone through with the abortion, I mean."

Scott was quiet for a long moment. "Sometimes," he admitted finally. "But I try not to dwell on it."

Neither said anything for several minutes. Virgil allowed his eyes to drop half-shut, trying to picture how things might have been if Scott had not forced Nancy Lucas to abort her baby. Scott's son – and Virgil had no doubt that it would have been a son – would have been nine years old by now.

"You tried to tell me about it, didn't you," he asked quietly, still staring thoughtfully into the distance. "That night that you called me from Texas? You tried to talk to me."

Scott did not ask which phone-call Virgil was talking about. They both remembered the drunken conversation, even if they had never allowed themselves to talk about it. "I wasn't thinking straight that night," he mumbled tiredly. "Too much booze and not enough sleep. I just wanted to hear a friendly voice, that's all."

"Why didn't you say anything about the baby?" Virgil knew that he sounded childishly hurt, but was unable to keep the whine from entering his voice. "I would have listened."

Scott tried to turn his body to look up at his brother, but the movement dragged his injured leg slightly askew, twisting his knee a little deeper into the spear of metal. A bolt of pain shot up his spine, causing him to snarl and bare his teeth. He bit down on the cry that welled up in his throat and – after a moment of breathless agony – the pain began to recede into the background.

Wheezing softly, he lay bonelessly back against Virgil's shoulder, angry at himself for being so stupid. "I...I suppose I was trying to protect you. Or maybe it was just self-preservation. I don't know. I just didn't want you to realise what a heartless bastard I'd turned out to be."

"You didn't mind telling me twenty minutes ago."

"Yeah, well...if you can't be honest in the face of certain death, then when can you?" Scott gave a small smile at his own feeble attempt at sarcasm.

Virgil looked self-consciously down and clasped his hands in his lap. "Whatever happened with you and Nancy, it doesn't change anything. I still..." he opened his mouth to say the word 'love', but was too timid to vocalise it, "...respect you. I just want you to know that."

Scott's eyes were beginning to close again. His jaw was going slack, his skin clammy and grey, and Virgil knew with horrifying certainty that his brother wouldn't live out the hour.

"Thanks, Virg," the elder Tracy murmered, floating somewhere in the shadows between sleep and consciousness. "Really, thanks."

* * *

_The arrivals lounge at New York International Airport, and Scott Tracy stood with his suitcase in hand, searching the crowd for a familiar face. _

_He was still dressed in his air-force uniform and could feel the admiring stares of his fellow passengers as they walked passed. The looks made him acutely uncomfortable and he fidgeted unconsciously. Why the heck hadn't he changed clothes before he left Berlin? It was nearing Christmas, and a tinny rendition of 'Silent Night' played over the lounge's audio system. Scott had returned to America at the behest of his father. Spending the holidays with his family had seemed like a good idea at the time...now, however, he wasn't so sure. _

_The Tracy family had long since disbanded. After finishing his degree, Virgil had gone on to work for an engineering company in Tokyo, designing and modelling commercial carrier-craft. John had trained with NASA and was now stationed at Cape Kennedy, quietly working a desk while less-qualified men journeyed to the stars. Gordon had represented the US during the last Olympics and won a gold medal for his efforts...but, less than a month later, had badly fractured his spine and had just spent the past year in London, confined to a wheel-chair while he gradually regained the use of his legs. Alan – the youngest of the Tracy brood – was now in the final stages of his astronauts training at Houston and was expected to graduate with top honours. _

_As for Scott...well, Scott was still flying, still amazing his superiors. He was now five years older than he had been when he first gained his wings, and had a whole new set of stripes to show for it. He'd also been presented with a medal for valour, but he kept that hidden in a box in his quarters. During his military career, he'd been posted all over the world – England, China, Cuba and now Germany – but he'd never been able to out-move the guilt that had trailed him since his first stationing at Texas. _

_No matter how far he ran, the hate-filled ghost of his unborn baby was always there beside him. _

_...And so now here he was – twenty-five years old, a national hero and a private failure – waiting in the airport arrivals lounge, nervously biting his lip while he waited for his family to arrive. How long had it been since the Tracy brothers had last been together? Six months? Seven? They were almost strangers now – distant acquaintances who had known each other as children. Truth be told, Scott could hardly remember what his brothers looked like..._

_What the hell were they going to say to each other? _

"_**Scott**!!"_

_Scott turned around, startled to hear his name called. His dark blue eyes narrowed as they raked the crowd, quickly spotting a familiar figure in the midst of so many strangers. Alan. A small smile crept at the corner of his mouth, tired frown fading at the sight of his youngest brother. God, when had the baby of the Tracy family grown up to be this strong-jawed young man? Had he really been away so long? _

"_Scott! Hey, Scott!" Alan pushed his way forcibly through the crowd, throwing himself at Scott in a hug that knocked the wind out of him. "Great to see you! Jeez, were you always this tall?! Gordon! Gordon, he's over here!"_

_Scott wheezed helplessly and tried to pry his brother away, not knowing whether to laugh or cry at such an unexpected display of emotion. Before he could collect himself sufficiently to return Alan's greeting, however, he felt a heavy hand impact against his back. Gordon._

"_Hey Scotty!" The auburn-haired Tracy grinned broadly and shook his head. "Boy, you look awful!"_

_Despite himself, Scott returned the grin. "Gee, thanks. I've been off the plane for five minutes and you're already laying in the insults."_

_Gordon smiled and shrugged, balancing precariously on the crutches he now required to walk. "Ah, I mean it as an endearment. I have a lot of lost time to make up for, you know." _

_Another figure moved out of the crowd now, approaching the brothers with shyly lowered eyes and self-conscious smile. John. He stepped forward to touch his brother lightly on the elbow. "Its good to have you back, Scott. We've all missed you."_

"_Yeah, I missed you fellas too. Where's father? I'd kinda hoped that he'd be here to meet me."_

_John took Scott's suitcase away from him. "Father? Oh, he's just parking the car, that's all. He should be here in a couple of minutes. I think he has something that he wants to talk to you about." _

_Scott raised his eyes heavenward, remembering the last few conversations that he'd had with the Tracy patriarch. "Is he **still** harping on about this International Rescue idea of his?" _

"_He's serious about it this time, Scott," John said, watching his brother with eyes that were red-rimmed from staring at computer__ screens all day. "In fact, I think that's partly the reason why he's called us all together like this."_

"_...That and the fact that it was about time for a Tracy family reunion." The unmistakable sound of Virgil's voice sounded from somewhere behind him. "Hey Scott."_

_Scott whirled on his heel at the unexpected voice, grin fading as he looked at his best friend for the first time in seven months. Virgil was tanned from time spent in the Japanese sunshine, his once scrawny frame now filled out by compact muscle. His eyes, however, were much the same as they had ever been...as was the small smile that now played at the corner of his mouth. _

_Scott beamed and nodded, eyes glittering. "Merry Christmas, Virgil." _

"_Merry Christmas, Scott." Virgil gave that small, serene smile of his, and tilted his head. "You look tired."_

"_I look old, but thanks for mentioning it." _

_A short silence fell over the group. Then, suddenly, Virgil laughed. Then Scott. Then Gordon, Alan, and eventually even John joined in, laughing even though they did not truly understand why. After so long apart, the Tracy family was back together... it felt natural to laugh. _

_As the brothers walked out of the airport, Scott felt Virgil drape his arm comfortably around his shoulder, chatting absently about all that had happened in Scott's absence. Scott listened and nodded in all the appropriate places, but did not say anything. He didn't trust himself to speak. Any private doubts that he had harboured only minutes before had disappeared completely. He was so... happy. He was home, he was with his brothers, he was with Virgil..._

_...**This** was where he was meant to be. _

_Scott never took the flight back to Berlin. Two weeks later, he respectfully withdrew his service from the United States Air Force, asking for – and receiving – an honourable discharge from operative duty. He and his brothers spent the winter in New York, re-learning how it was to be a family while their father went about the final stages of procuring Tracy Island. _

_...After a while, Scott stopped thinking about what had happened in Texas. The guilt never fully went away, but at least - with his family around him - he forgot how to be lonely. _

__

_

* * *

_

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"I think I'm beginning to hallucinate."

Scott heard Virgil's voice as though from a distance, and found himself opening his mouth to answer. "Why?"

He felt Virgil's chest shudder beneath his head as he gave a soft chuckle. "Because I can hear the London Symphony Orchestra playing Wagner's _Tannhäuser._"

Scott – who had never shared his brother's high-brow taste in music – was ready to dismiss the comment as pure fancy, when he too noticed the strange noise. He couldn't hear any Germanic opera in it, however. To him it was nothing more than a regular, low-pitched humming noise, like the sound of far-away machinery.

He stifled a sigh, too tired to wonder about it. "It's probably just the water-pressure on the ship's hull. Ignore it."

The water was up to his waist now. The ice-cold Atlantic lapped quietly at his legs, seeping through the blackened remains of his IR uniform and chilling him to the bone. Even in this ghostly semi-dark, he could see the blood seeping out from his crippled knee, diffusing into the clear liquid that surrounded it and staining the water a sickly scarlet.

He shivered with cold, and that just made the pain worse.

Virgil's voice again, even further away this time. "So...any regrets?"

Scott tried to smile, but it was too much effort. A storm-cloud was beginning to gather inside his brain, and it was making thinking difficult. "Too many," he mumbled, voice slurred as though he'd drunk his way through a bottle of scotch. "You?"

Virgil sighed, leaning his head back against the wall. "I wish I'd spent more time with Alan and Gordon. I wish I'd talked to John more often. I wish..." he hesitated suddenly, lowering his eyes in private shame. "...I wish I'd told father just how much I hated him sometimes. I wish I'd told him about how much he hurt me when I was young...about how I used to lie in bed and dream that he had been the one that died instead of mom." He stopped and flushed, elated and guilty at having admitted his feelings after keeping them so long repressed. "I wish I'd told him how much I loved him, in spite of everything."

A strange interval of silence followed this revelation. Scott felt like he was floating somewhere above his body, twin smoke-plumes of pain and fear beginning to surge forward on the horizon.

"I wish that I'd learned to play the piano," he said after a pause, feeling the need to venture some personal disclosure after what Virgil had just admitted.

Virgil smiled sadly. "If we get reincarnated together, maybe I'll teach you."

Scott was feeling sick now, and his vision swam with bright pin-points of light. He closed his eyes tightly shut. "Do you believe in that kind of stuff?" he asked softly, allowing his mind to drift back into darkness.

He sensed rather than saw Virgil shake his head. "No, not really. It's just kind of hard to accept that this is the end, you know?" There was an uneasy pause, then Scott felt his brother's fingers stroking questioningly at the side of his face. "...Scott?"

Scott kept his eyes closed. The darkness continued to grow, and he knew that he could no longer fight it. The current was too strong for him to swim against. That irritating whirring noise was growing louder outside. He wished that it would stop.

"...Just keep talking Virgil."

A trembling sob sounded somewhere above him. Virgil had stared to cry. "D-do you remember back when we were kids, Scott? Do you remember how we used to climb the trees in the back yard? Mom would come out of the kitchen and watch us. She pretended to smile, but I always knew that she was scared to death in case we fell." Scott could not see him, but he could imagine the shaking smile that his brother wore. "But I was never frightened...not while I was with you. I knew that you wouldn't let anything happen to me."

Virgil's fingers were in his hair now, tenderly smoothing out the curls. It was a surprisingly intimate gesture, and Scott found it deeply comforting on some primitive level - more loving than sex, more personal than a heart-to-heart conversation. In all the thirty-years of Scott's life, he could not remember having felt so deeply connected to another human being. Not to his father, whom he had looked up to and admired....not to his military friends, whom he had risked his life for in the name of duty...not to all the countless girls he'd screwed in a futile attempt to quell his loneliness.

...Was this what it felt like to be loved by someone, wholly and unconditionally? Had he and Virgil always had this connection, or had it only been forged this very minute? Scott didn't know. He probably never would.

Virgil's voice again, low and choked: "And I can remember how high you used to climb – right up to the tallest branches. You were so sure of yourself...so goddamn cocky." He sighed heavily, tired and sad. "The sun was always seemed so much warmer when we were children. It felt like summer was never going to end. Do you remember, Scott?"

At the sound of his name, Scott opened his eyes. His vision was blurred and hazy – no matter how many times he blinked, his sight would not clear. He gave a pain-wracked whimper and held a shaking hand out, desperately seeking his brother in the blinding darkness. To his relief, another set of fingers enclosed around his own.

"It's okay, Scott. I'm still here."

Scott's eyes stared up into the nothingness. Then, gradually, an indistinct figure seemed to emerge from the black mist. Was it Virgil? Scott could no longer be certain. The hair was golden-brown, to be sure, and the eyes were still the same deep hazel that he had always known...but the face was too soft, too _beautiful _to be his brother.

_...Mom?_

"Oh God...oh _God_, I can't do this...I don't want to die." Scott shivered, his chest heaving with every laboured breath. His expression contorted as another wave of pain rippled through his body. "I want to go home," he cried mournfully, no longer ashamed to feel the tears that streaked down his face.

His mother...Virgil...whoever it was, nodded, and Scott felt the fingers grip even tighter around his hand...

_...The sun warm on his face...his hands reaching out to grasp the next branch...Virgil giggling happily in the leaves below him...his mother, scared and proud, staring up at him from the far-away lawn..._

-I'm dying, aren't I mom? I'm dying, just like you did-

_...The smell of new-cut grass in the air...the tinny melody of a distant ice-cream van...him waving down to Virgil...goading him to climb higher..._

-I'm sorry, Virgil. I'm sorry for everything-

_...No more branches to climb now...he'd reached the top...wanted to carry on climbing, right up into the sky...didn't want to come back down...didn't want to look back..._

-It doesn't hurt anymore-

-Thank God, it doesn't hurt anymore-

Scott Tracy's heart-beat slowed...faltered...then stopped altogether, and Virgil was helpless to do anything but watch as his brother fell lifelessly away from him.


	6. The aftermath

_Disclaimer: Standard disclaimers apply. Please don't sue me. _

_Authors note: Boy, its been a while since I updated, huh? Thanks to everybody for being so patient – RL's just been really nuts lately, and fanfiction had to take a back seat for a while. If I owe you an email, I should have it sent out to you within the next day or so. Its been so long since I logged on to the 'net that I've got about thirty unanswered emails on my inbox. Sorry!_

_I have no idea what Grandma Tracy's real name is, so I've christened her Marie-Anne. If anybody knows what her canon name is, just leave me a note and I'll edit asap. _

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* * *

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'**_A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity'_**

**__**

**_

* * *

_**

**__**

_Virgil was a man educated to deal with emergencies. _

_Since his early teens he, like the rest of the Tracy brothers, had been trained in first-aid. In retrospect, it would seem that Jeff Tracy had always understood the dangers that his sons would someday face...or perhaps he was just a paranoid parent, seeking to protect his children in anyway that he could. Either likelihood was plausible. In any case, his insistence that they be taught to deal with any eventuality had prepared them well. Virgil – now an old man of twenty-eight - knew more about emergency medical procedures than most third-year student physicians. For him, a human body was repairable in the same way that a damaged power-relay or jammed rocket booster was. _

_He was an engineer – it was his job to fix things. _

_...But how the hell was he going to fix his brother?_

_In a dream-like haze, he felt Scott fall away from him. At first he had assumed that it was he himself who had collapsed...that his knees had given way, made useless by shock. It did not take him long to realize, however, that this was not the case – that it was in fact Scott who was falling, and he who remained upright. He stared down in mute horror at his brother sank beneath the water. The water was deep now – almost to his hips – and once Scott was submerged, it was as though his very existence had been erased. _

Gone. Forever. No more Scott Tracy.

...I'm all alone...

_Through the disbelieving fog that now clouded his brain, Virgil suddenly gave a strangled moan and dropped to his knees, desperately fishing in the water to locate his brother's body. For one, terrible moment, he felt nothing. The water was ice-cold and had a slick, greasy film of petrol on the surface – when Virgil's frantic movements caused some to splash in his face, he could taste oil. Blind and on the precipice of total panic, he made a graceless lunge downwards, his outstretched fingers finally coming into contact with a mass of wet curls. _

_Scott. _

_He cried out, torn between triumph and alarm, and gripped tightly, dragging Scott up by the top of his head. _

_He more than half expected Scott to cough – to choke, spit, curse...anything to show that he was still alive – but nothing happened. Scott's face was as still and cold as a marble effigy, and every bit as lifeless. His eyelids were open, but there was no sight left in them, the familiar blue irises clouded and dull. Virgil stared down into them and found only his own reflection staring back..._

_...and that was when he knew for certain that his brother was dead. _

"_Scott?"_

_Virgil hardly recognized the sound of his own voice. It sounded feverish, almost guttural with need, and there was an ugly tremor to his words as he spoke. _

_He called again, louder this time. "Scott, please..."_

_Still no answer. _

_Scott's voice in his memory – only in his memory now - trembling and afraid: 'I want to go home.'_

_Virgil's face crumpled. _

_He cried: no longer the soft, subdued sobs of a man not wanting to inflict his sorrow on others, but real, gut-wrenching wails of still-raw pain. His grip on Scott's shoulder was too strong, causing the dead-flesh to bruise beneath his fingertips. Virgil didn't even notice. His face was streaked with mucus and tears, his entire body seized with agonized howls. Slouching forward, he clutched his brother's cold body close against his own and buried his head in the waterlogged hair. _

_He cried like a tormented animal, because that was how he felt. _

_Minutes trickled and slowly – _oh so slowly_ - Virgil's wounded grief grew still. He snuffled quietly to himself; eyes dry, but lifeless too, as though his soul had somehow leaked out alongside his salt-water tears. His senses closed off, one by one, leaving only a hollow numbness at his core. Emotionally and intellectually, his mind had shut down. Perhaps it was better this way. If nothing else, it was certainly easier. _

_Time passed._

_Distantly, as though through a fog, he became aware of a noise outside the confines of the flight deck. It was low and mechanical in tone - quiet for the moment, but growing steadily louder with every second that passed. Whatever it was, it certainly wasn't Wagner anymore. Had it ever been? Virgil wasn't sure. As much as he loved the thrill of an orchestra, he'd never had much of an ear for opera. _

_More time. The water level continued to rise._

_A new sound now – not outside, but in. The ruined radio crackled into life, a sudden blare of static deafening against the surrounding silence: _

"_...ott? Virgil? Are you there? Thunderbird 2, do you copy? Please answe..." _

_He knew that voice, but it was wrong somehow. He'd never heard his father afraid before..._

_The long-range receiver had been destroyed during the initial explosion, which meant that the radio had to be picking up the message over a short wave frequency – the kind that was supposed to be used for communicating from deck-to-deck. Jeff must have been extremely close in order to get any kind of message through. Six-hundred meters, maybe? Perhaps even less. Virgil felt nothing at this realization. _

"_...ust hang on in there, boys. We are at your position and - " A crackle of static, a few lost words. "– lasers to cut our way in. We've got the equipment, but it'll be slow going. Please, if you can hear me, try and respond..." _

_Virgil didn't move...didn't answer. He had no voice left to speak. Instead, he adjusted Scott's awkward weight more comfortably in his arms, cradling him close to his chest and beginning to rock slowly back and forth. There was a ghost of a song running through his mind, and he quietly began to mumble it out loud. _

"_Can you imagine us years from today...sharing a park bench quietly...? How terribly strange to be seventy..."_

_He trailed into silence, not able to remember the rest. Scott had always complimented him on his singing voice. _

_From somewhere in the darkness behind him, he heard a series of bangs running through the ship's hull. Docking clamps, perhaps? Virgil began to hum the tune absently to himself – repeating the same disjointed line over and over again, like a broken record. The bangs continued for several minutes, noisy and intrusive, and Virgil was unsurprised when the white-hot glow of a laser began to slice slowly through the outer wall. _

_His father had found him. _

_Virgil licked at his lips, tasting sweat and long-dried blood. "See the sparks, Scott? Guess father found us after all. Who'd have thought, huh?" He blinked tiredly, absently tidying Scott's hair. "...Too late for the important stuff, of course...but I guess he never was any good at turning up for family events." _

_Scott was cold now – gray and bloodless. Virgil wished that he could get that damned spike out of his knee. He was so awkward to hold with one leg pinned to the ground..._

_When his father and the WASP crew finally managed to break in almost an hour later, that was how they found the surviving Tracy: blank-eyed, rocking, and still huddled protectively over his brother's bloodied corpse. _

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* * *

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Tonight - as it was most nights – Virgil woke up screaming.

The cry died in his throat as soon as his eyes snapped open, but the echo – the tormented ghost of his own choking voice – continued to throb through the still night air. He lay in bed and listened, body trembling and slick with sweat. Gradually the silence returned, and with it, his memory. Fresh tears began to prickle at the back of his eyelids, hot and insistent, but he didn't have enough energy left to cry. Instead, he propped himself up on his elbows and glanced around the room, mentally taking stock of his surroundings. A chair, a desk, a lamp, a bookcase, a piano. He was in his bedroom back on Tracy Island, a long way away from the bleak waters of the Atlantic.

Safe.

A muffled pattering of slippered feet in the hallway, then the soft click of his bedroom door being opened. Through his half-closed eyelids, Virgil saw his grandmother standing in the doorway. This was another part of the nightly ritual. Marie-Anne Tracy had never let one of her grandson's cries go unanswered.

Her age-softened voice, low and soothing: "Virgil, sweetheart, are you alright?"

Virgil swallowed and forced his expression into neutrality. He hoped that his glittering eyes would not show in the dark.

"I-I'm fine grandma. Go back to sleep."

"Are you sure, baby?"

_Baby_. She'd always called him that, even though it had been years since he was young enough to warrant the term. All of her grandson's were still babies to her. It didn't matter how old they became, or how much they antagonised her on occasion...Marie always used the endearment when talking to her grandchildren.

She'd called Scott her baby too, once upon a time...

Virgil went cold inside, furious at himself for his still-lingering grief. "I'm sure."

He felt her waver, understood that she didn't want to leave, but was glad when he saw her turn sadly away. Her concern was stifling. He knew that she would have loved nothing more than to hold him tightly – to calm his pain for his dead brother as easily as she had fixed an owie when he was a kid – but that was something that he would not allow to happen. She'd make him talk, cry, grieve openly. Virgil didn't want any of those things. He just wanted to be left alone.

The old woman hesitated, then bowed her head. "Well...alright then, if you're certain." She began to retreat slowly back into the darkened hallway. "Good night my darling. God bless."

Another click of the door and she was gone, leaving only the faint perfume of lavender oil in her wake. Virgil had always liked the smell of lavender - it reminded him of summer and his mother's face lotion. He allowed himself a brief moment of nostalgia. It felt good to indulge in memories that didn't hurt for a change.

It didn't last for long, of course. He lay back onto the bed, listening to the dull thud of his own heartbeat. Scott was with him. Now. Always.

"_We were all really proud of you." _

Virgil frowned, staring blankly up at the ceiling. When had Scott said that? He mentally sifted through the annals of his life, searching for that one specific recollection amongst countless others. It came to him in pieces, like a jigsaw in his mind.  
Ice-cream...tux...tiles beneath his feet. Ah yes, that was it...the night of the recital. He peered into the gloomy bedroom, gaze falling on a black shape set against the far wall. A piano – not a large one, albeit, like the grand instrument in the sitting room, but a piano all the same. It had been a present on his fifteenth birthday, a gift from a proud and guiltily absent father. Virgil had loved that piano. It had been his companion through teenage heartbreak, adult loneliness, and professional frustration...music providing a release for his emotions at times in his life when he had otherwise lacked the words.

Nowadays, however, the piano sat silent. The once gleaming ivory keys were dull with lack of use, music sheets discarded and finely coated with dust.

"_We were all really proud of you."_

Scott had loved that piano too. He used to stand in the doorway as Virgil played, silently appreciative of his brother's talents. Virgil tried to keep hold of that memory, but the harder he tried, the more blurred and uncertain it became. Scott never stayed young and happy in his mind. Sooner of later, the memories always shifted, and he was back in the flight deck of Thunderbird 2, dully singing to his brother's cold corpse.

The tears again, and no grandma Tracy to hide them from this time. Virgil turned his head into the pillow and let himself cry. He tried not to make too much noise, however.

...Even when heartbroken and grieving, Virgil was still a remarkably considerate young man.

* * *

A milk-white moon hung low over the darkened horizon, the air infused with the clear tang of ocean spray. Standing outside on the veranda, Jeff Tracy listened to his son's muffled sobs and took a long drag on his cigar. He briefly considered going into Virgil's room, maybe try to comfort him in some way, but he quickly decided against it. He'd never really been much of a hands-on parent. That had been Lucille's role, and later on, his mother's. Jeff had never felt comfortable with the emotional side of family life.

Scott had been a lot like him, in that respect.

He blinked, inhaling deeply on his cigar. The faint glow lit his features briefly, the tired lines around his eyes standing out in shadowed relief. With only a few hours to go until sunrise, this was the first break that Jeff had allowed himself from the small mountain of paperwork on his desk, and – truth be told - he was already beginning to wish that that he had stayed in his office. There were reports to file, designs to approve, adjustments to be made...work had not stopped with Lucille's death, and he was determined that it would not with Scott's either. He already had Brains working on the design schematics for the new Thunderbird 2 replacement, and Alan was due to start training on Thunderbird 1 within days. The Tracy's might have lost a son and brother, but International Rescue had lost its top field agent.

...Jeff found it easier to think of his loss in terms of his organisation, rather than his family.

Virgil's crying again – quiet, but increasingly difficult to ignore. Not for the first time, Jeff wondered why he chose to stand here night after night. Certainly not for Virgil's benefit. He hardly even spoke to his son anymore, let alone took any action to console him. Both men were nursing a private grief and Jeff, for his part, preferred to keep it that way. _Private_.

The veranda doors slid softly open. Marie-Anne Tracy stepped out into the cool night air, wrapping her dressing grown a little tighter around her frail body. Jeff didn't turn around to look at her. He could already guess at the look of worn disapproval on her age-lined face...she had always hated him smoking.

"How long is this going to go on for?" he asked softly, eyes narrowing into a mild frown.

Marie shrugged, moving to stand beside her son by the veranda's railings. "As long as it needs to, I suppose. You have to let these things run their course."

"It's been over three weeks. International Rescue might be inactive for the moment, but we can't stay off-line for much longer. Virgil's my best pilot now – I need him back to full operational status."

Marie clicked her tongue with ill-disguised annoyance. Never one hide her opinions, she turned to look her son squarely in the eye, matching his cool dispassion with an equal measure of maternal fury. "You talk as if he were one of those damned machines of yours," she scolded quietly, mindful of Virgil's bedroom window only a few feet away. "He's your son, Jeff. Stop acting like his boss and start being his father!"

Jeff scowled. He already knew where this conversation was going, and he didn't like it.

"I'm just trying to be practical."

Marie snorted. "Trying to be an ass, more like. Don't think that I don't know what you're doing, Jeffery Reginald Tracy. Burying yourself in work so that you won't have to deal with the real issues...you did the exact same thing when Lucy died." Her thin lips pursed, one finger jabbing threateningly in the air. "Well I won't stand by while you alienate those boys of yours. Not again."

"This isn't exactly easy for me you know," Jeff hissed, shoulder's tensing at the mention of his late wife.

"And it's a walk in the park for poor Virgil, I suppose?" Marie challenged defiantly. "He's hurting, Jeff."

"Well he's not the only one."

"Maybe not, but you're his father. You're _supposed_ to help him."

He frowned, breathing a mist of bitter smoke from his nostrils. Scott – toddler Scott, the child that he had been – had always laughed when he did that. That was how Jeff wanted to think of Scott, as the dark-haired smiling baby that Lucille had brought into his life...but, somehow, whenever he tried to think of his son, his mind always brought him back to the same horrifying image: that of Virgil – pale, bloody, and half-mad with grief – cradling his brother's body on Thunderbird 2's flooded flight deck.

How could she expect him to help Virgil after _that_? Jeff was still struggling to come to terms with it himself.

"You weren't there, mom," he murmured, blinking quickly and turning his head away. "You didn't see what I did." He paused, busying himself with tapping the ash away at the end of his cigar. "I...I just don't know what to do with him anymore."

Marie's expression softened somewhat. She gave a heavy sigh, raising a hand to rub at her aching temples. "Well I hope you figure it out soon, sweetheart. That boy's been through enough without losing his father too." She reached forward and patted him comfortingly on his arm. "Try and get some sleep, hm?"

Jeff nodded, trying to smile and failing miserably. "I will mother."

It was a lie, and they both knew it, but Marie seemed comforted nonetheless. She turned her eyes heavenward, wrapping her arms protectively around her chest. "Lucy's got some company up there, at least," she whispered thoughtfully, "And maybe that's not such a bad thing." She paused, chuckled sadly, then turned her gaze back to her son. "She always did love that baby boy of hers."

Jeff stared deadly down at the cigar in his hand. "I know," he said, faintly surprised by how old his voice sounded. "I loved him too."

His mother watched him in silence for a moment, then turned to move slowly towards the veranda doors. Jeff did not follow her immediately, however. He inhaled one final time, then put the cigar out on the scrolled balcony railing. Like everything else that Jeff Tracy did, even this small action was done firmly and decisively – one quick jab, one anticlockwise grind. He suddenly realised that he could no longer hear Virgil crying.

_God...if you have any mercy at all...let me have my baby back..._

Even as he turned to walk back into the house, Jeff did not place much weight in his prayer. He already knew that there was no God. He had known it from the moment that Lucille's heart had stopped beating over twenty years previously.

* * *

"...Earlier today, International Rescue made the unprecedented move of issuing a press release identifying their fallen agent as 'Scott'. No last name was given, nor details of his nationality, but we were told that he was thirty years old and the pilot of Thunderbird 1..."

Click.

"...Details are beginning to emerge that the international terrorist known as The Hood has claimed responsibility for firing the missiles that disabled Thunderbird 2 over three weeks ago. While his precise motives are unclear, it would seem that The Hood has held a long-standing grudge against International Rescue, and has even gone so far as to issue a statement hailing Scott's death as 'a triumph'..."

Click.

"...Later on today Her Majesty the Queen will lead the country in a tribute to the fallen International Rescue agent. The speech, due to be broadcast live from Buckingham Palace, will be followed by a nationwide minute of silence. Similar services are being conducted across the globe..."

Click.

"...Plans to salvage the remains of Thunderbird 2 from the Atlantic seabed have been postponed indefinitely. The wreck – located by WASP after the IR communications operative was able to negotiate for its whereabouts – has been deemed by experts to be completely beyond retrieval. So far International Rescue have not commented as to whether they plan to rebuild their famous carrier craft..."

Click.

Alan raised his head from his book, fingers tiredly massaging at his forehead. "Gordon, for the love of God, just pick a channel and stay with it."

Gordon was sitting cross-ankled on the living room floor, mechanically prodding at the remote control every couple of seconds. He hadn't bothered to dress since waking that morning, and his thin cotton pyjamas were emblazoned with designs of tropical fish. He looked for all the world like an overgrown eight year old...an impression only strengthened by the look of childish confusion he wore.

"I can't," he grumbled, "they're all playing the same damn thing."

Alan frowned in annoyance and then returned his book. "It's been weeks. You'd think that they'd be getting bored by now."

Gordon gave an embittered laugh. "Are you kidding? Scott's death is the best thing to happen to tv networks since Live Aid. Think of the ratings!"

"Its sick."

"Its profitable."

Alan did not even attempt to argue with Gordon's point. How could he? The media circus that had erupted three weeks previous was of a level that none of the Tracy family had ever anticipated. News-teams across the globe were practically scrambling for details as the story was gradually uncovered. The event in itself was like something out of a Hollywood blockbuster...Thunderbird 2 shot down from the sky by a revenge-bent terrorist, two pilots trapped alive at the bottom of the sea-bed, a daring rescue under impossible circumstances, and then the tragic death of an unknown hero.

...Alan could understand the public interest in his brother's demise, even if he could never bring himself to approve of it.

Of course, the press was not fully aware of what happened three weeks ago. They would never know, for example, of how John had been forced to act as negotiator when The Hood had called Thunderbird 5 with his demands. They would never know about the secrets that Jeff Tracy had exchanged in order to receive his son's whereabouts. They would never know about the favours that Gordon had had to call in to get the WASP sub patrolling the eastern Atlantic to rendezvous with his father. They would never know the human cost of Scott's loss. To them, he was – and would always be – a name without a face.

Just 'Scott'.

After a few more minutes of aimless channel surfing, Gordon eventually found a program about French horticulture and decided to stick with that. He stared blankly at the television screen, slack jawed and pale from lack of sleep. He had no interest whatsoever in horticulture – French or otherwise – but anything was better than watching the details of his brother's death being relayed over and over again.

"Virgil had that dream again last night."

Alan's eyes did not leave the page of his book, but he began to chew distractedly on the inside of his lip. "How do you know?"

Gordon shrugged, squinting in the clear morning sunshine. "The gut-wrenching screams were a pretty big clue, I guess."

"Ah."

"Yeah. '_Ah'_."

Alan hesitated, then placed his novel to one side. Still sitting on the low couch, he drew his knees up to his chin and wrapped his arms around his legs in a protective hug. His ash blonde-eyebrows drew together in a thoughtful frown, lips pursed and shifting sideways.

"...Do you think that things are going to start to get better soon?"

The auburn-haired aquanaut gave a soft sigh. "How can they?" he asked dully, without a trace of humour. "Scott's dead, Virgil's gone nuts and father's workaholicism has reached hitherto unimagined depths. We weren't exactly the Von Trapp family before, but now..." he trailed off into contemplative silence, then shrugged. There wasn't much else that he could say on the subject.

A pause.

"I hate this."

"Me too."

The babies of the Tracy family fell into depressed quiet once more.

Bored of watching the horticultural program, Gordon changed the channel once more. An American chat-show was on, hosted by a large, sickly-sympathetic woman with a bad perm. The topic of the show was _'My shocking sex secret with dead IR agent'_. Gordon peered curiously at the row of trashy women lined up on the stage. None of them looked like Scott's type.

Partly out of boredom, partly out of morbid amusement, the two boys sat in silence and watched as the media picked over their brother's bones.

* * *


End file.
